


Happy Birthday, Baby Blue

by Fanfic_is_a_sin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, No Sex, One Shot, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 12:39:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16787113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanfic_is_a_sin/pseuds/Fanfic_is_a_sin
Summary: A short little birthday fic for one of my partners. It's Lance's birthday, and Shiro's there to celebrate. Shklance actually, because I hate voltron, but love myself.





	Happy Birthday, Baby Blue

> 
>     When I came back some nights
>     I saw him caught beneath a streetlamp
>     talking with the girl he loved
>     
>     turning his palm over
>     like a phrase he couldn’t remember.
>     
>     I saw the night come down around them
>     one hand turning
>     and how she turned in the dark
>     
>     and smiled, blue scarf on her head,
>     blue dog at her feet, blue attic between the stars.  
>     >   
>     > -Excerpt from [On a Night Like This](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/night) by Michael Telg

There were always moments like this, steps he couldn't take alone. It was silly. Lance was a pilot. Lance was a _paladin._ Space should be the last thing that scared him. Maybe it was the breathing. Frenetic, hot beneath the visor of his helmet, it was nothing like his usual armor. Safer, for this sort of thing. Probably. He wasn't actually sure how much alien tech was spliced into anything around here, anymore. It was safer, though, yeah. Shiro would have tested it first. Wait.

"Ready?" Shiro's voice sounded different, these days. Not all that much. It was hard to notice, beneath the white hair and the new arm and the constant, heavy peace that had fallen over their lives. But Lance noticed it. He sounded... tired. But tired like he'd woken up unexpectedly, and not tired like he wanted to be asleep again. It was different. And, like the hair, Lance could get used to it.

"I've been ready," he said, hearing himself in the comm speakers behind his ears. The exo suits were designed with three separate communication redundancies in case of a breach. "You're the one who's been worrying about it for two hours."

He heard Shiro chuckle. The nuisance filter on the suit's audio receptors cut out his favorite part: the breathiness of the whole thing. Like he had to try a little harder than other people to come up with a laugh. It used to worry them. But, like most things they worried about, Kieth eventually brought it up. They talked. Now, Lance knew: it took some effort, sure, but not because he wasn't happy. Lance looked back at him, standing near the release panel for the airlock. Even through the thick solar shading on his visor, the crease in Shiro's brow told him that the man was smiling. He smiled back. "In my defense, this is pretty dangerous," Shiro said. 

"We're not being shot at, Allura's on vacation, and Hunk talked Pidge into waiting for the second trip to try out rocket boosters. It's practically the least danger we've ever been in." Lance crossed his arms. As much as he could manage, in the thick insulation around them. "Besides, the universe isn't gonna kill me on my birthday." 

Shiro pressed a few buttons on the airlock panel, and Lance reflexively grabbed for the handrail. 

"Oh," Shiro muttered. "Sorry. Prepping the release code. I won't open it until you're ready." 

"I know," Lance replied quickly. "I just don't trust these stations. Altean tech is a lot less janky." 

Shiro nodded. That was all. Lance appreciated that about him. The quiet acceptance of whatever excuse his mouth came up with before his brain remembered that it was Shiro-- he didn't need to act like this wasn't scary. Not that it was scary. Just... different. 

"Alright," Shiro said. "We're good to go, whenever you're ready."

Lance turned away from his boyfriend to look at the door ahead. It was janky, to be fair. Earth's retrofitted space stations were still in the process of upgrading. Part of the ongoing project, headed up by Pidge and Hunk. Nobody really had Pidge's knack for building things out of all the salvaged extragalactic stuff they'd picked up, and Hunk turned out to be one hell of a leader. _We defend the planet,_ he'd said. _But it's not enough. The network is about making the Earth better, not just safer._ Linear Isometric Orbital Network. L.I.O.N. It took them forever to come up with the acronym. When it was done, it'd be a defense grid, solar harvesting system, and unifying cultural center all in one. 

And it would help them retire Voltron. None of them said it, but after everything that had happened, they all needed to be more than just Defenders of the Universe for a while. He felt Shiro's fingers press gently between his. "You alright, baby? We don't have to do this."

Lance looked up at him. Of course, they'd always be ready. Even in publicity shots, you could see it in their shoulders. Always set. Always prepared to fight for Earth. For home. He squeezed Shiro's hand. "Don't even think about it. I ain't letting you back out of my big birthday spacewalk." 

Shiro squeezed back. "Ain't," he started. 

Lance narrowed his eyes. _Keith._

"I'm ready," he said.

Shiro nodded. He reached back and pressed a button. There was a _snap-hiss_ as the airlock slid open, and just like in their practice simulations, he and Shiro let the current of escaping air carry them off of the platform and out into space. He could still hear his breathing.

There hadn't been a lot of time to stop and look around since they left the Garrison. For all the time he'd been in space, he'd never really seen it. Not like this. Not wrapped up in it like one in an impossible number of tiny blue-hued stars hurtling through infinity. It was a lot, all at once. He'd never realized that the black between sparks of light and glimpses of distant worlds _moved_ , breaking between the points of focus in his vision like it had its own current. And it was wonderful. And he was afraid.

And Shiro was there. Their hands never broke as they floated further and further out from the space station. The suits had gentle propulsion systems to bring them back, eventually, but who was to say how time would pass out here? Lance was afraid, but he'd been afraid plenty of times in his life. This time, he didn't have to say anything to convince anyone that he wasn't. This time, Shiro was here. As they tumbled out into space, Lance turned, pulling his boyfriend closer to him. Without the artificial gravity of the station, it didn't matter that Shiro was bigger, and stronger, and a little stiffer after all he'd been through. Out here, he, and Lance, and space, and time, they all moved the same way. Shiro held him, and they spun together past sights that Lance had spent his whole life wanting to see up close. 

Lance squeezed Shiro's hand. Shiro was there, and he squeezed back. 


End file.
